FEATURES OF COMPUTER-BASED TESTING OF STUDENTS WITH MAJOR IN PHYSICS

At present the use of computer technology becomes more and more popular. On the one hand, they can be applied jointly with classical teaching methods for creation of high level educational programs. On the other hand, internet and computer technologies can be a basis for e-learning. Therefore software in the field of education is rather demanded, particularly, it concerns complicated theoretical course of mathematics and subjects of natural sciences. There are various software solutions for different education purposes. The learning content management systems (LCMS) are most corresponded to organize and realize the educational courses and to examine the knowledge obtained. It should be noted that computer-based testing of natural sciences courses has some particular features. Because of difficulty of these subjects it is necessary to take into account those specifics in the process of both preparation of the computer-based testing and choice of learning content management systems. In this connection we suggest a new approach for a practical realization of the computer-based testing based on LCMS in mathematics and subjects of natural sciences. In the first instance it is essential to sort out a basic testing from advanced. The basic part of testing could be divided into a theoretical block and problems solving in a subject. The theoretical block contains a minimum of knowledge on the subject which is necessary for successful learning of the subject. The implementation of basic theoretical testing based on LCMS requires the formalization of the test content in the form of questions and answers similar to the standard form of computer-based testing. This testing can be recommended as a replacement of classical passing the test on a certain subject. Another part of the basic testing is a problem solving block. This block of tasks is aimed at consolidation of the practical and theoretical abilities of the subject. The problems included in the test should be standard and assume a numerically solution. Thus the basic problem testing could be carried out with using standard instrumentations of LCMS because the answer of test question will be a numerically solution of a task. It should be noted that an automatically generation of initial data and numerically solution of problem at the beginning of testing could be good idea. Unfortunately, the practical realization of this idea on LCMS is too difficult. The goal of advanced testing is a complex control of knowledge of the subject. In this case the standard opportunities of the basic theoretical and practical testing could be supplemented with a possibility of step-by-step reply to question. It allows to separate the difficult theoretical question or practical task into a more simple and consecutive blocks, which can be realized as standard testing question. Thus, the suggested approach of advanced testing could be realized with standard LCMS instrumentations.

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